SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Researchers trick Tesla Autopilot into steering into oncoming traffic

Researchers have devised a simple attack that might cause a Tesla to automatically steer into oncoming traffic under certain conditions. The proof-of-concept exploit works not by hacking into the car's onboard computing system. Instead, it works by using small, inconspicuous stickers that trick the Enhanced Autopilot of a Model S 75 into detecting and then following a change in the current lane.

Tesla's Enhanced Autopilot supports a variety of capabilities, including lane-centering, self-parking, and the ability to automatically change lanes with the driver's confirmation. The feature is now mostly called "Autopilot" after Tesla reshuffled the Autopilot price structure. It primarily relies on cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and radar to gather information about its surroundings, including nearby obstacles, terrain, and lane changes. It then feeds the data into onboard computers that use machine learning to make judgements in real time about the best way to respond.

Researchers from Tencent's Keen Security Lab recently reverse-engineered several of Tesla's automated processes to see how they reacted when environmental variables changed. One of the most striking discoveries was a way to cause Autopilot to steer into oncoming traffic. The attack worked by carefully affixing three stickers to the road. The stickers were nearly invisible to drivers, but machine-learning algorithms used by by the Autopilot detected them as a line that indicated the lane was shifting to the left. As a result, Autopilot steered in that direction.

In a detailed, 37-page report, the researchers wrote:

Tesla autopilot module's lane recognition function has a good robustness in an ordinary external environment (no strong light, rain, snow, sand and dust interference), but it still doesn't handle the situation correctly in our test scenario. This kind of attack is simple to deploy, and the materials are easy to obtain. As we talked in the previous introduction of Tesla's lane recognition function, Tesla uses a pure computer vision solution for lane recognition, and we found in this attack experiment that the vehicle driving decision is only based on computer vision lane recognition results. Our experiments proved that this architecture has security risks and reverse lane recognition is one of the necessary functions for autonomous driving in non-closed roads. In the scene we build, if the vehicle knows that the fake lane is pointing to the reverse lane, it should ignore this fake lane and then it could avoid a traffic accident.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

A single-dose antidote may help prevent fentanyl overdoses

A newly developed single-dose opioid antidote lasts several days, a study in mice shows. If the results can be duplicated in humans, the treatment may one day help prevent overdoses from deadly drugs like fentanyl.

Normally, a dose of the opioid antidote naloxone passes through a person's body in about 30 minutes — far too quickly to fully counteract the effects of such synthetic opioids as fentanyl and carfentanil (SN Online: 5/1/18). These drugs, tens to thousands of times stronger than morphine, can linger in a person's system for hours or even days (SN: 6/10/17, p. 22). That requires multiple doses of an antidote to prevent someone from overdosing.

So researchers developed a new naloxone-based antidote to outlast synthetic opioids by creating nanoparticles in which naloxone molecules are tangled up with a biodegradable polymer called polylactic acid. Water and enzymes in the body slowly break down these nanosized tangles, gradually releasing naloxone.

In mice, the new nanoparticle delivery system counteracted the pain-relieving effects of morphine for up to 96 hours after administering a single dose of the antidote, according to research being presented March 31 at the American Chemical Society meeting in Orlando, Fla.

"We're now going to start moving onto fentanyl and carfentanil" and ramping up opioid doses to test whether the antidote can prevent a mouse from overdosing, says Saadyah Averick, a biomaterials researcher at the Allegheny Health Network Research Institute in Pittsburgh.

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martyb writes:

Yes, this is silly and some could rightly call it a bit of a "Soyvertisement", but I thought the community might be interested in seeing this unusual rendition of a popular TV show's intro. How good a job do you think they did?

See Game of Thrones Intro Reenacted With 2,750 Oreo Cookies:

If all the HBO Game of Thrones marketing tie-ins have done their job, your season 8 premiere party on April 14 will be stocked with Bud Light and Oreo cookies.

Oreo had already teased the release of Game of Thrones-themed chocolate sandwich cookies, but the official announcement arrived on Tuesday along with a video re-creating the show's main title sequence with nothing but Oreos.

Nabisco plans to roll out special edition cookies "embossed with stylized logos for House Lannister, House Targaryen, House Stark and The Night King" starting on April 8.

Watch the video on YouTube.

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upstart brings us this IRC submision from chromas:

Microsoft Kills Off Its Book Store, Offers Refunds to Everyone

Microsoft has decided to discontinue the books category in the Microsoft Store, with customers no longer allowed to purchase new content since April 2.

Furthermore, the software giant says that all books would be removed in July 2019, and users would be offered refunds for their purchases.

"Starting April 2, 2019, the books category in Microsoft Store will be closing. Unfortunately, this means that starting July 2019 your ebooks will no longer be available to read, but you'll get a full refund for all book purchases," the company announces [Ed's note: blank without JS --FP].

"While you can no longer purchase or acquire additional books from the Microsoft Store, you can continue to read your books until July 2019 when refunds will be processed."

All refunds will be offered with the same payment method that you used to purchase books from the store, Microsoft says. In case this method is no longer valid or if you purchased a book using a gift card, the credit is added to your Microsoft account and you can then spend it in the Microsoft Store. [...]

Also at the BBC.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Study reveals genes associated with heavy drinking and alcoholism: Unique genetic variants may inform future treatments for each alcohol disorder

The findings, published this week in Nature Communications, suggest that, although heavy drinking is a prerequisite for AUD, variants in several genes -- DRD2 and SIX3, for example -- may need to be present for people to develop AUD.

"This study has revealed an important genetic independence of these two traits that we haven't seen as clearly before," said Henry R. Kranzler, MD, a professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and first author of the study. "Focusing on variants only linked to AUD may help identify people at risk and find targets for the development of medications to treat it. The same applies to alcohol consumption, as those variants could inform interventions to help reduce consumption in heavy drinkers, who face their own set of adverse effects."

[...] Environmental, hereditary, and genetic factors all play a role in AUD; however, many of the variants across the genome believed to be associated with the disorder remain to be identified.

For the study, the researchers used genetic data from the multi-ethnic Million Veteran Program (MVP), a national, voluntary research program sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which includes white, African-American, Latino, and Asian participants. The diverse study sample is notable, in that it included more than 50,000 African-Americans, one of the largest genome-wide studies of this population. Scores from the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test-Consumption (AUDIT-C) screenings and AUD diagnoses were obtained from the same population (a total of 274,424 people) to conduct the GWAS for the two traits. The researchers also analyzed other data from health records to look for correlations between genes and diseases, as well as other non-alcohol related traits.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Smart liquid goes dark in the heat

A smart liquid that darkens dramatically in response to rising temperature has been developed by researchers at A*STAR. The nanowire-based thermochromic liquid's tunable color-changing behavior was retained even after hundreds of heat-cool cycles.

[...] Previous thermochromic liquids have usually been based on organic dyes or liquid crystals. Although amenable to industrial-scale production, organic dyes tend to degrade upon exposure to light, while liquid crystals require encapsulation to avoid degradation in air. A thermochromic liquid that overcomes these limitations has been discovered by Wen-Ya Wu and her colleagues from the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, in collaboration with researchers at the National University of Singapore.

Wu's research is focused on semiconductor nanocrystals, which form a colloidal suspension in certain solvents, and which are known for their broad light absorption and high photostability. "While exploring the synthesis of colloidal antimony selenide (Sb2Se3) nanoparticles, we serendipitously discovered that they formed crystalline nanowires upon heating and dissolved into their molecular precursors upon cooling, in a certain mixture of solvents," Wu says.

Thanks to their broad light-absorbing behavior, a vial of Sb2Se3 nanowires formed by heating can appear very dark. But a solution of their molecular precursors, which the nanowires revert to upon cooling, are relatively transparent. "This phenomenon formed the basis for developing these materials as liquid-based thermochromics," Wu says.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Oral sex is associated with reduced incidence of recurrent miscarriage^[$]

In a matched case control study, 97 women with at least three unexplained consecutive miscarriages prior to the 20th week of gestation with the same partner were included. Cases were younger than 36 years at time of the third miscarriage. The control group included 137 matched women with an uneventful pregnancy. The association between oral sex and recurrent miscarriage was assessed with conditional logistic regression, odds ratios (ORs) were estimated. Missing data were imputed using Imputation by Chained Equations.

In the matched analysis, 41 out of 72 women with recurrent miscarriage had have oral sex, whereas 70 out of 96 matched controls answered positive to this question (56.9% vs. 72.9%, OR 0.50 95%CI 0.25-0.97, p = 0.04). After imputation of missing exposure data (51.7%), the association became weaker (OR 0.67, 95%CI 0.36-1.24, p = 0.21).

[EDIT: The paper is referring to females giving oral sex to males. --fyngyrz]

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

There really is something unique about Tennessee whiskey, study finds

Fresh make distillate for Tennessee whiskey undergoes an extra filtration step prior to barreling called the Lincoln County Process, aka "charcoal leaching." (The moniker comes from the Tennessee county where Jack Daniels set up its first distillery.) If it doesn't go through that process, it can't legally be sold as Tennessee whiskey, although different distilleries have their own methodologies within that requirement.

Charcoal is a common substance used for filtration in distillation, and the charcoal chips used in the Lincoln County Process are made from selected sugar maple trees native to the region. Filtering the whiskey through charcoal is thought to improve its flavor by jump-starting the aging process, removing more congeners, even before the whiskey is poured into charred oak barrels for aging.

[...] First, Munafo and Kerley established a baseline flavor profile by analyzing the distillery's unfiltered whiskey with a combination of two techniques: gas chromatography-mass-spectrometry and gas chromatography-olfactometry. (The latter tool enabled them to sniff out the individual components as the compounds were separated.) Next, they used aroma extract dilution analysis to tease out which compounds were most critical to the whiskey's flavor profile, and in what concentrations.

The team then soaked several other batches of distillate in the charcoal for between one to five days and analyzed those resulting samples. "If you taste the control that hasn't been treated, and the one that has been treated, there is clearly a reduction of these harsh attributes," said Munafo. That difference in flavor corresponded to the significant changes they measured in the chemical composition of the unfiltered and filtered whiskeys. The levels of some classes of compounds decreased by as much as 30 to 50 percent.

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DannyB writes:

Justice Department Warns Academy Over Potential Oscar Rule Changes Threatening Netflix

The Justice Department has warned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that its potential rule changes limiting the eligibility of Netflix and other streaming services for the Oscars could raise antitrust concerns and violate competition law. [...] According to a letter obtained by Variety, the chief of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim, wrote to AMPAS CEO Dawn Hudson on March 21 to express concerns that new rules would be written “in a way that tends to suppress competition.” [...]

The letter came in response to reports that Steven Spielberg, an Academy board member, was planning to push for rules changes to Oscars eligibility, restricting movies that debut on Netflix and other streaming services around the same time that they show in theaters. [...]

“if the Academy adopts a new rule to exclude certain types of films, such as films distributed via online streaming services, from eligibility for the Oscars, and that exclusion tends to diminish the excluded films’ sales, that rule could therefore violate Section 1.” [...]

The letter reflects concerns that the Justice Department has been concerned about the ability of traditional media outlets to limit competition from new streaming video entrants, even those that have grown significantly in recent years like Netflix and Amazon Prime. [...]

Now if only Netflix could replicate the true theater experience of cell phones, crying babies and being searched like a criminal.

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martyb writes:

GameStop Posts Massive Loss as Pre-Owned Game Sales Plummet:

One of the world's biggest video game retailers just announced its worst annual performance in decades, raising renewed questions about the health of the physical video game market as downloadable games continue their ascent. Net sales for GameStop were down 3 percent for the 52-week period ending February 2, a slide that helped flip last year's modest $34.7 million profit to a sizable $673 million operating loss. On top of that, the company expects sales to decline another 5 to 10 percent in the next fiscal year.

GameStop's massive loss is the largest ever reported by the company, and only the third annual loss since it grew out of the corporate remains of FuncoLand in 2000. GameStop last posted a loss in 2012, when it lost nearly $270 million thanks in part to weak holiday sales near the end of that era's console generation.

But more than the amount, the reason behind the new loss could be cause for long-term concern at the retailer's thousands of worldwide storefronts. While hardware sales were roughly flat and new software sales fell about 4 percent year over year, pre-owned software sales cratered nearly 12 percent for the year, continuing a years-long slide.

GameStop has always relied on the high margins of buying low and selling high on used game discs to buoy an otherwise low-margin business. But the rise of downloadable games, which can't be resold, has taken the wind out of those sails to a large extent. "We continue to see declines in pre-owned software, reflecting the decline in sales of new physical games and the increasing demand for digitally offered products," GameStop COO & CFO Robert Lloyd said in an earnings call.

I'm curious how many Soylentils still prefer to buy their games on physical media and who prefers a digital distribution. What's your motivation? Also, what if anything, can Game Stop do so as to continue as a going concern?

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martyb writes:

Two Soyuz flights are scheduled for Thursday April 4 and the second flight ever of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy is planned for April 7.

The Soyuz flights will take off from two different locations. The first, which is scheduled for 11:01:35 UTC (07:01:35 EDT), is of a Soyuz-2.1a from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. According to SpaceFlightNow, it carries "several tons of fuel, food and supplies for the space station and its six-person crew."

The second Soyuz flight (of a Soyuz 2-1b) is scheduled for a 16:30:37 UTC (12:30:37 EDT) launch from the Guiana Space Center on the northeast coast of South America. It carries four broadband satellites for O3b Networks "which provides broadband service to developing countries."

The Falcon Heavy (FH) has flown only once before (on February 6, 2018) when it sent Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into an orbit that extended past Mars' orbit. The FH is comprised of 3 SpaceX Block 5 cores, each of which has 9 Merlin engines.

The upcoming Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled for April 7th/8th (launch window: 22:36-00:35 UTC). That works out to 18:36-20:35 EDT on April 7th. The flight "will launch the Arabsat 6A communications satellite for Arabsat of Saudi Arabia. Arabsat 6A will provide Ku-band and Ka-band communications coverage over the Middle East and North Africa regions, as well as a footprint in South Africa." (Information taken from SpaceFlightNow's Launch Schedule.)

SpaceX launches are typically live-streamed on YouTube. Check SpaceX's Channel for more info.

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martyb writes:

Researchers Find 540 Million Facebook User Records on Exposed Servers :

Security researchers have found hundreds of millions of Facebook user records sitting on an inadvertently public storage server.

The two batches of user records were collected and exposed from two third-party companies, according to researchers at security firm UpGuard, who found the data.

In the researchers' write-up, Mexico-based digital media company Cultura Colectiva left more than 540 million records — including comments, likes, reactions, account names and more — stored on the Amazon S3 storage server without a password, allowing anyone to access the data. Another backup file on a separate storage server by defunct California-based app maker At The Pool contained even more sensitive data, including scraped information on more than 22,000 users, such as a user's friends lists, interests, photos, group memberships and check-ins.

According to UpGuard, neither company responded to requests to have the data removed. Facebook contacted Amazon to pull the data offline, a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

"Facebook's policies prohibit storing Facebook information in a public database," said the spokesperson. Facebook said there is no evidence yet to show the data has been misused but that it was investigating.

[...] "Storing personal information collected from end users is a liability," said [director of cyber risk research at UpGuard, Chris] Vickery. "The more you have, the greater that liability becomes."

At what point will we see Facebook actually take protection of user's info seriously?

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DannyB writes:

Judge orders Fairfax police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

Victory for privacy advocates could force police statewide to erase license databases

A Fairfax County judge on Monday ordered the Fairfax County police to stop maintaining a database of photos of vehicle license plates, with the time and location where they were snapped, ruling that "passive use" of data from automated license plate readers on the back of patrol cars violates Virginia privacy law.

[...] The ruling by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Robert J. Smith is a victory for privacy rights advocates who argued that the police could track a person's movements by compiling the times and exact locations of a car anytime its plate was captured by a license plate reader.

[...] Police say they can, and have, used license plate location data to find dangerous criminals and missing persons. Privacy advocates don't oppose the use of the technology during an active investigation, but they say that maintaining a database of license plate locations for months or years provides too much opportunity for abuse by the police. Last month, the ACLU disclosed that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was tapping into a vast, national database of police and private license plate readers. Such private databases remain unregulated.

The Fairfax judge's ruling applies only to the Fairfax police, but it may find a receptive audience, and have statewide impact

Imagine if all cars looked exactly the same.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

A jaguar ate her cub — the world's first jaguar to be born via artificial insemination — just days after its birth.

A team of veterinarians at the environmental organization Mata Ciliar in Jundiaí, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, hailed the birth as a scientific breakthrough for the conservation of the species.

The majestic felines are an endangered species, with rapidly diminishing numbers surviving in limited Amazonian territory, where 90 percent of the animals are found.

[...] "Bianca was a first-time mother and this may have influenced the outcome of the event. The veterinary team could not conduct a necropsy because the baby had already been eaten."

[...] Despite what happened to the newborn, research team leaders said they are happy with the result. They are already planning to carry out more procedures throughout this year.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/03/worlds-first-jaguar-born-by-artificial-insemination-is-eaten-by-mom/

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RandomFactor writes:

Penn State researchers have formulated a new composition of germanosilicate glass with zinc oxide that shows promise for lens applications.

The researchers invented a new family of zinc germanosilicate glass that has a high refractive index comparable to that of pure germania glass. The samples also showed high transparency, good ultra-violet-shielding properties, and good glass forming ability, making them suitable for lens applications. They published their results in a recent issue of the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids.

Other glasses with comparable properties have various roadblocks such as toxicity of materials, higher opacity, or simply being difficult to form.

The new glass also should be less expensive to manufacture than current glasses used for this purpose.

Research was funded by Penn State. Conghang Qu and Arshiya Bhadu, both undergraduate students in materials science and engineering at Penn State, also contributed to this work.

The researchers have filed for a patent.

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takyon writes:

A Political Quake in Turkey as Erdogan's Party Loses in His Home Base of Support

Step by step over the years, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey sought to ensure nobody could challenge him. He marginalized adversaries. He purged the army, the police and the courts. He cowed the press. He strengthened his powers in the Constitution. And he promised Turks a bright economic future.

So it was a huge surprise when the outcome of weekend municipal voting showed on Monday that Mr. Erdogan's party had not only lost control of Ankara, the political center, but maybe Istanbul, the country's commercial center, his home city and longstanding core of support. Even if the results were not final, they amounted to the most momentous political earthquake to shake Mr. Erdogan in nearly two decades of basically uncontested control at the helm of Turkey, a NATO ally and critical linchpin of stability in the region.

What was different this time was the rapidly tanking economy and a highly disciplined opposition. It deployed monitors to not only scrutinize the vote tallies but also sleep on sacks of sealed counted ballots to guard against possible tampering by members of Mr. Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP. "We think they were not able to rig the election," said Ilayda Kocoglu, 28, vice president of the Istanbul branch of the opposition Republican People's Party, or CHP, who slept on some sacks herself. "They were not expecting us to be that organized, or that resolved."

The results do not mean that Mr. Erdogan, whose term as president lasts for four more years, will change his behavior, which includes promoting Islamic religious values over secularism, closer ties to Russia and chillier relations with NATO. But the election showed Mr. Erdogan has weaknesses. "It's a catastrophe for him," said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "We now know he is not invincible."

See also: Erdogan's AK Party challenges Istanbul, Ankara poll results
Turkish voters send a clear message to Erdogan: Enough
Has Erdogan's Populism Reached Its Limits?

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